Researchers shine a light on the complex links between climate change, individual responsibility and social inequalities

Research into perceptions on climate change, individual responsibility, and social inequalities offers new insight for policy making.

In their article, ‘Acting on climate change concerns: lay perceptions of possibility, complexity and constraint’, summarised in a recent contribution to the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures blog, SSP’s Professor Sarah Irwin and Dr Katy Wright make a case for more nuance in discussions around personal responsibility for acting on climate change. 

As part of their research, Professor Irwin and Dr Wright conducted a survey followed by qualitative semi-structured interviews with citizens living, working or studying in Leeds. In the blog, the authors share insights from their analysis of the complex and varied ways that participants engaged with ideas of personal responsibility, practical constraint and emotions such as guilt within the context of wider socio-political systems and carbon-intensive societal living. 

While people are often asked how personally responsible they feel for acting on climate change, this research delves into the diverse ways people engage with and interpret this question, and draws on individual responses that deal with conflicting and complex emotions, intentions and perceptions. 

The research underlines the importance of the social contexts that shape individuals’ everyday lives and investigates the links between feelings of personal responsibility and the normalised practices and systems in which individuals are situated. The researchers write: 

Policies which seek to change individual level behaviours place responsibility on citizens who, commonly, already feel more responsibility than efficacy. 

Our participants saw acting on climate as a responsibility ‘across levels’ from individual to governmental yet, crucially, meaningful action at the level of the individual was widely held to be inseparable from and contingent on wider systemic changes to low carbon living. This nuance deserves wider embrace in the policy sphere.

The blog contribution follows the publication of the researchers’ article in Environmental Sociology, an international peer-reviewed journal that aims to highlight the relevance of sociological research for environmental policy and management. 

In another article published in Social Policy & Administration last month, Professor Irwin investigated another facet of climate perceptions: social hardship and climate change policy in the context of the cost of living crisis, reporting on a study undertaken with Dr Lone Sorensen.  

The article analyses data from group discussions with participants from low income and marginalised backgrounds, in which several participants emphasised the importance of tackling both social hardships and climate priorities, seen by some as interlinked issues. Many participants foregrounded wider societal unfairness relating to experiences of poverty, exploitation, a lack of voice or even recognition and a keen sense of disconnect between politics and their own everyday concerns and lived experiences. 

In the article, ‘Addressing hardship and climate change: Citizens’ perceptions of costs of living, social inequalities and priorities for policy’, Professor Irwin argues that:  

climate policy making should engage more fully with contexts of social inequality and that social wellbeing and systematic action on climate change need to be treated by policy makers and politicians as profoundly interlinked challenges.

Professor Sarah Irwin is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Research on Families, the Life Course and Generations (FLaG). Her research interests include parenting, educational inequalities, youth transitions, subjective social inequalities, lay perceptions of climate change and engagement with climate-relevant policies. She sits on the University of Leeds Climate Plan Research Review Committee and is co-chair of the University’s Just Transitions Taskforce.  

Dr Katy Wright is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Policy and holds particular expertise in researching the role of the public and communities in policy agendas, with a special interest in how people think about different types of risk and adversity and the different ways in which they respond. 

Feature image: “-,- complexity [4]” by nerovivo, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.